If anyone was watching BBC 2 this evening , the programme about Mario Lanza , you may have noticed this mic.

In the clip where he arrives in the UK and is met at what I think was a London train station, by hordes of adoring female fans , a tv interviewer asks him a few questions using this mic.

Its a cast iron sphere about two and a half inches in diameter , with a hole on one side about an inch in diameter with a grill and presumably capsule mounted inside. Over the aperture there is a circular disk about three inches in diameter with a hole in the centre of about one and a half inches.

I found one of these once in a bottom drawer in a tech room at a London cabaret club I was working at , and was quite intrigued. I think I once placed it face down on the floor in an attempt to mic up a tapdancer. Cant remember how successful that was , not very probably.

Anybody got any ideas

p.s. no I cant draw

Once called an "Apple and Biscuit" mic! Very tolerant of ludicrous SPLs Apparently the BBC used one in the bell-chamber to record Big Ben (130 - 160 dB close to the hammer at strike!).

you mean one of these - STC 4021

omni-directional and rather heavy!

http://www.btinternet.com/~roger.beckwith/bh/mics/4021.htm

all you've ever wanted to know........

nice one guys that was a bunch of very quick replies